The wildfire smoke may have me cowering in my home, but life goes on... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Imperial Forces! Well this is epic...

When I was sent this TikTok, I marveled at the fact that this cat even allows the helmet to be put on his head. My cats would run off the second I even got the helmet near their heads.

   
• Gadget Time! Speaking of 3D printing...

It's enough to make me want to buy a 3D printer, except I know I'd never be this clever. Here's another video by the same guy...

I mean, come on. All of these are genius.

   
• DIYphone! Speaking of 3D printing... this right here is one of the coolest things you'll see all day. Guy made his own phone with clicky keyboard. The patience required to work through all this is mind-boggling...

Brah. The fact that the result is so killer is just icing on the cake. Instant subscribe to Marcin Plaza's YouTube Channel, which is brilliant, clever, and funny. And worth your valuable time.

   
• Pi Times Two! Speaking of 3D printing... and now... this...

Now, I know this is nothing compared to the earliest days of computing where the components of the computers themselves had to be built... but, still... this kind of thing is pretty amazing. 3D printing is making it possible to do all kinds of cool stuff.

   
• Neat! I was given a link to this article: Obscure But Badass Folks You Should Know About, which is exactly what it claims to be. AND THEN... I fell down the very large rabbit hole that is Neatorama. You've been warned.

   
• More Mitchell! A while ago I shared a video of David Mitchell's rants from the brilliant Would I Lie To You. Well, here's more laugh out loud moments...

I swear, the Royal Wedding statement, which I've watched multiple times now... always, always gets me.

   
And now back to being a hermit.

After taking yet another massive allergy pill so I could get a whole four hours sleep last night, I'm exhausted but recovering. My lungs don't feel itchy and I can eat real food.

But it's a different matter entirely for my cats. Who want to go out in the catio. Bad.

I keep showing Jake the air quality reading on my phone and telling him "It's too smokey for little kitty lungs outside!" But he sits there looking outside and crying because I've blocked the door to the catio...

It's particularly upsetting at night, because he sits there and howls because he can't get out. While I'm trying to wind down and rest. Fortunately I can call down to him and he'll come up and fall asleep next to me, because... yikes.

Jenny was upset at first, but resigned herself to the fact that she can't go out.

Which is good, because there's so much smoke out that you wouldn't know it's Summer. If not for the heat, you'd swear it was an overcast Winter day. And I really, really don't need my cats going in and out and brining smoke in with them.

In July they don't want to be outside in the heat very often any way. But September? Prime catio season...

Reeeeeeally hoping that this fire gets under control soon... but at over 9,000 acres and counting, it's not likely. Which means come Monday I'm going to have to leave my house for work and get sick, sick, sick again.

Which is nothing compared to the suffering by my cats not being able to go outside, of course (just ask them!).

And... fire season has arrived.

I honestly thought that we'd somehow get away without a local fire filling the valley with smoke. Fires were around us all Summer, they always are this time of year, but we never had such bad air quality that I ended up sick. Until today when I could barely function at work and had to leave for part of the day.

Allergies suck bad enough when it's pollen... but smoke? That goes past being uncomfortable to debilitating shades of misery and suffering. I feel my lungs itching from inside and there's nothing that can fix it. Breathing is tough. And eating anything more than crackers is impossible.

So here I sit confined to my house with air purifiers on full-blast and every entry sealed... eating soda crackers and drinking 7-Up Zero while trying to ignore the fact that I wish I could pass out from having been outside.

Hopefully things will clear up over the weekend so I won't have to go through this all over again on Monday.

I am at such a loss as to understand how our toxic society became "anti-science" that I feel like I must be insane.

But then I saw something which put it in clear perspective for me...

And there it is.

Science has been such a huge fucking miracle in our lives that we can't conceive of what life was like before the discoveries we've been blessed with. And so kids are dying from preventable diseases and laws are in process to deny people from even having the option to get vaccinated.

Welcome to the death cult mentality which is fucking up the entire world.

It's gotten to the point where I'm afraid to read the news.

I keep adding key words to automatically delete the horrors of the day from my feed reader but, with new horrors arriving daily, it's a never-ending battle. Just when I think I've filtered out everything that sends my anxiety skyrocketing, heeeeeeere comes dread and despair!

The sad thing is that I usually pride myself on being up on current events and well-informed about what's going on in the world... but this? This?!??

Where is that world-ending giant meteor when you really need it?

Since I frickin' lost all the entries I had written for this week and am having to go back and remember what I must have been doing during this incredibly busy week.

Work, mostly.

And while I work? The many adaptations of Agatha Christie's fantastic murder mystery sleuth, Miss Marple. My mom was a huge Christie fan and I'd read the books she got from the library after she finished them. It was a natural progression from the Encyclopedia Brown books of my youth.

But anyway, back to adaptations...

My most favorite adaptation of Marple is the two TV movies starring Helen Hayes... A Caribbean Mystery and Murder with Mirrors. To this day I remain gutted that we didn't get another movie or six from her, because she added such a flawless and effortless air of mischief to the character.

Before Helen Hayes we got a different take on Marple by Angela Lansbury in The Mirror Crack'd. The movie was a good one, but Lansbury was much better suited to playing Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote (which my mom also loved). Alas, the movie didn't do well at the box office, killing a planned trilogy.

Joan Hickson is widely seen as the "definitive" Miss Marple by many, and her adaptations of the 12 novels are legend. What's bizarre is that Agatha Christie herself wanted Hickson to eventually play the character after seeing her in a play in the 1940's. It's bizarre because this series didn't start filming until 1984. Which means Christie was seeing the actor 40 years before she would play the role, and died before she saw Hickson realize her dream casting choice. Of all the adaptations made, this series is probably the most faithful (or, as faithful as it could be given that so much time had passed since the books were written).

And then we come to Marple... the adaptation which wasn't much of an adaptation which ran from 2004-2009. Granted, it's been so long since I read the books that I'm a bit fuzzy on details, but this series plopped Marple into stories she wasn't actually in and changed some major plot points of the books in which she did. As if that weren't enough, they invented details of Marple's life which don't remotely fit the character (she's always been a spinster, but this show gave her the back-story of having had an affair with a married man in the second episode?!?). Geraldine McEwan starred in the first three series and was fine... but the entire appeal of Marple is that she's a sweet old lady. Instead they wrote her as slightly more aggressive in this series, so the charm just wasn't there. When she retired and the role was taken by Julia Mckenzie, they kinda realized the error of their ways and reverted her personality back to the sweet old lady from the novels. Which is to say that I liked the final three series quite a bit more than the first three, and there were some excellent episodes. Even so, the Hickson series still manages to top anything we got here.

And now we're in 2025 where apparently we're getting new Miss Marple movie adaptations after the success of the Kenneth Branagh's Hercule Poirot films. I'll watch them, of course, but I didn't think any of the three modern Poirot adaptations were as good as what came before. Albert Finney (Murder on the Orient Express) and Peter Ustinov (Death on the Nile) were sublime in their respective film adaptations, and David Suchet's take on Hallowe'en Party (which became A Haunting in Venice) is also my preferred adaptation. But still... I'll hope for the best.

No matter what happens, the books still exist*

   
*Albeit with the racism, antisemitism, and other bits edited out for modern audiences.

Of course I ended up working on Labor Day. It's tradition, after all.

But it gets worse! I knew I would be very busy this week, so I wrote a series of entries over the weekend following up on how I've been buying picture frames every payday to start hanging up my various collectibles and prints and such. I took a photo of what got hung up, wrote about how, when, where, and why I ended up with the piece, then moved on to the next entry.

And then lost everything.

Except the photos.

So now I guess I've got something to blog about (again) sometime in the future.

I guess I'm on a blogcation until Saturday then.

I may not have a three day weekend like some people in the USA, but don't you fear about me making time for bullets... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Small, Small World! The Disfarers YouTube channel has been interesting, and I've been going back through them to see what I missed. This one from three months ago is hands-down one of the most fascinating Disney Parks video I've ever seen. It's not just about It's a Small World, it's about the fascinating process of Imagineering which has a lot of cameos by a lot of rides...

While not a fan of the ride so much, I'm a massive fan of Mary Blair, and have always appreciated the artistry of the ride. And now I appreciate it even more.

   
• Wedneday Murder Club? Why. Why would Netflix make a major change to The Thursday Murder Club when they KNOW that this has screwed up faithfully adapting the future books? Insanity. Just insanity. I know the book was much deeper and some things (like back-story) would be lost when translated to a 2-hour movie (requiring some things to change), but this? THIS?!? What possible reason? My opinion of Chris Columbus as a director just dropped several stories. And the pacing is awful. Slow at the start where things could have been cut, then rushes to the botched ending where the time should have been spent. Character personalities are changed to bad effect. A good director would understand the books well enough to realize that this change wasn't a good one, and had the writers re-think things. Jeez what a disappointment. If you buy the rights to the book to turn it into the movie... ADAPT THE FUCKING BOOK! Two out of five stars because I'm mad a book series I love with actors I love was mostly good... until it wasn't.

   
• Atom Man vs. Superman! YouTube has a lot of cool restoration videos. The ones I'm enjoying now are the paper poster videos, because it always amazes me how they can just dump water on everything in order to flatten it (something I've tried after watching it, and it works... if you're careful). This last one I saw is very cool because it's so big...

I cannot imagine how much this kind of restoration would cost.

   
• Peaches! In my news feed, there was an article about Thomas Rhett's wife being pregnant with their fifth child. And I didn't know who that was. So I Googled him and some images popped up. Didn't recognize him, but he's obviously a famous country singer. then I see him in a Boston Red Sox jersey and am like... okay... I like him already. Then I see how famous he is, and I'm like... oh... I'm sure I've heard his stuff then. I click on the Boston photo and it's from his Instagram. I click though to that. He's got a beautiful family. And then I see gem...

Legendary dad material.

   
• Cracker! I didn't think that the new Cracker Barrel logo was terrible (for the minute it was used). But it was beyond terrible FOR Cracker Barrel. The thing about branding is that people can get incredibly attached to stuff that they form a relationship with. If you're changing something, for better or worse, they're going to react. So you had better have a very good reason to do it. And you need to be very smart about how you do it. This was a massive misstep from the jump, all because whomever was in charge of this mess committed the First Sin of Branding... they did not know their own audience. Because to say that this was a glaringly obvious disaster is not an understatement...

I don't even have Cracker Barrel where I live (the nearest one is in Vegas) but I reacted with a wince to the rebrand because I knew immediately how it would be received. Because I've been to one of them once. A decade ago. What's ironic is that they probably did it hoping it would be more appealing to society at large because sales were sliding. Now they're in the dumpster having to try and crawl their way out.

   
• Negative Four-And-A-Half Stars! Maybe I was too quick condemning Paramount+ for canceling Strange New Worlds after an upcoming abbreviated fifth season. Because Four and a Half Vulcans has got to be one of the shittiest episodes of ANY Star Trek I've ever seen. Good Lord. Somebody watched this dumpster fire and thought it should air? How did it get past script stage in the first place? It would have been better to cut it completely and come up an episode short this season than to air something this horrendously bad...

Apparently when you take the Vulcanizing serum, it changes your hairstyle!

The stupid... it still lingers.

   
• Insecticide! And lastly, allow me to once again comment on a botched adaptation. Butterfly, the comic book series, was a brisk four issues. It was breakneck storytelling and an interesting read. So when I found out that Prime Video adapted the comics with a leisurely six episodes, I was excited. Watching it, I didn't think it was as good as the source material because it got repetitive in ways that weren't interesting... but I liked the cast and thought "Well, this will be a nice diversion!"

AND THEN I GOT TO THE END WHERE THEY CREATED A STUPID FUCKING CLIFFHANGER AND A NONSENSICAL FUCKING TWIST TO SET UP A SECOND SEASON THAT I WILL NEVER... NEVER EVER... WATCH. What a lazy-ass pile of shit. Why is it that nobody can just complete a series any more? It always, always has to have a stupid-ass cliffhanger for a next season that may never come. Lazy fucking writers. Just tie everything up with an ending in case this is all we get! Then, if you get a second season, you can find a new and exciting angle to begin again. But NOPE! Easier to just fuck over the audience. And "easy" is all these talentless hacks have to offer. My God. It's getting to where I don't want to watch TV series any more. Though movies are doing it too. Netflix made a shitty The Old Guard sequel, which I hated, then ended that MOVIE on a cliffhanger which probably won't be resolved. I need to create a new website explicitly where people can share whether or not a show ends on yet another lazy-ass fucking cliffhanger so people can decide whether or not they want to invest time in something THAT MAY NEVER BE FINISHED. At least The Thursday Murder Club was smartly written enough to have a satisfying conclusion (well, if you haven't read the books).

   
If you're an American who's off work tomorrow, enjoy your day off from labor. If you're an American who's not off work tomorrow (like me) try and enjoy your Monday.

Jenny, as I have undoubtedly mentioned, is a fiendishly clever and intelligent cat. She's also unbelievably manipulative. Not just towards me, but her brother as well. Once or twice a week she does something which has me wondering if she's smarter than I am.*

Except... only in specific areas.

As an example: Jenny loves running up to bed with me so she can get some pets before turning in for the night. Me, not her. Because she would gladly be petted for six hours. But the minute I turn the lights off, she runs back downstairs to sleep. But anyway... She used to head up with me when I went upstairs. But sometimes I'd forget something or was just going up to get something and wasn't actually going to bed. So then she stopped going up with me until I would turn off the television. When that wasn't guaranteed, she would wait for me to call her to say I'm going to bed. When that wasn't guaranteed (I'm forgetful), she started waiting until I'm upstairs and have Siri turn off the downstairs (I tell Siri "goodnight" once I'm in bed for real, and everything outside my bedroom turns off).

On Tuesday night I got into bed and told Siri "goodnight," then Jenny came running up as usual. But I forgot to set out something I needed to remember to take to work, so I had to get out of bed to go back downstairs. Right after Jenny had jumped up to be petted.

She was furious. Started meowing her head off upstairs, because how dare I leave her there un-petted! Then, when I was taking too long, she came downstairs to get me. Meowing the entire time.

So I don't know what happens next. I guess I have to pinky-swear that I'm really going to bed and won't be leaving until morning or something.

So, yeah, she's smart.

And then...

Jenny sometimes wants to be petted while I'm on the couch... but doesn't want to sit next to me for whatever reason. So she'll sit all the way at the other end of the couch and meow in frustration at me because I'm not petting her. I reach out my hand to show her that I can't reach. But instead of realizing it, she'll lean her little head towards me like she can somehow bridge the 4-foot gap between us.

After five minutes of this nonsense, she begrudgingly got up and moved closer because she realized I wasn't moving. But she was angry about it. Wouldn't even look at me, no matter how much I talked to her...

"Just give me my damn belly rubs and shut up about it."

Now, there are other things that I honestly don't know whether she's smart about or not.

Like when she gets a drink.

Jenny refuses to drink from the cat fountain in the dining room. Maybe the moving water bothers her or something. So I ended up buying a still water dispenser for her. No big deal, right? Well, maybe. Because she will never just walk up and get a drink. There's a process. First she sits in front of the bowl and stares at it... waiting for it to move or something. Then she will dip her paw into it... making sure it's not going to move, I guess. Then she will taste it off her paw five or six times... to make sure it's not poisonous, perhaps. Then, and only then will she take a drink.

But here's the problem... she's so skittish that if I walk into the kitchen while she's drinking (or, more likely, preparing to drink) she will run off. This is bad news, because a hydrated cat is a healthy cat. And so, any time I get up to go into the kitchen and Jenny's not around, I will stand at the cat tree and look into the kitchen to see if I can proceed. If she's waiting for the water to attack her or in process of drinking, I will wait for her to finish before heading towards the kitchen!

If she's checking for poison? Smart. If she's worried that the water might be going to attack her after drinking from the same dish hundreds of times? Wellll...

   
* Yeah, I'm sure everybody reading this is thinking "Of course Jenny is smarter than you are." But I'm all... "Well, I don't see her able to earn a living or surf the internet, so how smart could she possibly be?"**

** Oh...

I like to have television playing while I work at home. But it has to be something I've seen before. Otherwise I'll pay too much attention to the show instead of the task at hand. And whenever I don't know what old series to watch, I consult Wikipedia's List of television shows considered the best.

Some shows have to be ignored because I refuse to watch (I still loathe Succession no matter how many people love it), others I have no desire to watch again (All in The Family, Cheers, Hill Street Blues, etc.), and others I've already seen way too many times (The West Wing, for example).

As I started down the list, I saw Better Call Saul and decided that was the one. Vince Gilligan has a new top-secret show in development for Apple TV+ (coming November 9th), so it seemed like a good choice.

But it was a huge mistake, because this exceptional spin-off of Breaking Bad demands your attention. Part of the thrill of the show is the exceptional performances by Bob Odenkirk and the rest of the cast, and so much of that is played out on their faces. Which means it's too distracting because I'm staring at the TV instead of my laptop.

It's such a great series...

Too great, which is why I'm rewatching Community for the hundredth time instead. Also a great series, but one I can work during.